Just got back from a tour of India, AMA

[samarrange]

There's an AMA section of the site, but I thought this was a better place.

We (DP and I, mid-60s) have just had the most fabulous holiday of our lives in India. I'm writing this at the gate at Mumbai airport.

We had 13 nights: 5 in the Delhi/Agra/Jaipur "golden triangle", 4 in Kerala, 3 in Goa, and one (but with nearly two days to visit) in Mumbai. It was a completely custom tour put together by an Indian travel agency. We like to see lots of different things and they obliged. We could have gone slower, done half-day instead of full-day tours, etc.

We stayed in 5-star hotels (porters, swimming pool, concierge, room service, etc — some international brands like Radisson and Grand Mercure, others Indian but every bit as good), except for 2 nights in a lodge-type place in the hills of Kerala which was just as nice, and a night on a houseboat which was not quite 5* but still amazing.

We asked the agency to book us accommodation on a B&B basis as we wanted to be able to go out sometimes to find our own dinners, and also because half/full board would have meant buffets, and we don't eat enough to do them justice. But all of the monumemt entrances, guides, and drivers were included in the price, as were the internal flights that we took (we have some CO2 penance to do).

The price, excluding air tickets to and from India which we booked ourselves, was £1,900 per person for two people. We only had to pay for lunch, dinner, drinks, and tips. Had we chosen 4* hotels (typically smaller, sometimes more like B&B, but we looked at the reviews for a couple of places and they seemed fine) it would have been £1,550 per person. We were actually a bit skeptical when we got the offer because we had expected it to be quite a lot more.

India exceeded our expectations in every way, and the logistics of our trip were simply stunningly well done. I won't mention the name of the company here but I can make it available via DM. Otherwise, if you've always been curious about the idea of going but a little bit reticent (like we were, until a family member went — and spent almost twice what we did, because they used a London-based travel agent), then feel free to ask me anything. 🙏

Who was your travel agent?!

Did you try the street food? Did you get sick?

Sounds fantastic. I’ve been before and did a very in depth golden triangle. Long time ago now. Do you think you’ll go back? What were your favourite sights/experiences?

“India exceeded our expectations in every way”. Tell me more! What did you expect and how did the country exceed that?

Do you intend to go back?

Also come back from similar, in Kerala and Tamil Nadu. Brilliant holiday.

Sucks that mumsnet has a compulsory comment rule for every thread you read. Else you could have just politely moved along.

….oh wait….

My point is not to be some kind of expert. But what our family member told us about their experiences was a key factor in us deciding to go. So I thought it might be useful for other people to hear someone else's experiences, even if — like literally every post on this site — they are the thoughts of some random on the Internet. 🙏

I did the golden triangle 36 years ago but we were camping so very different! It was an Exodus Overland Tour - how I wish you could still do those (London to Kathmandu in 16 weeks - 4 of those weeks were in northern India)

Just curious where in Goa as family from there. Therefore mostly stayed with family. A long time since I went but thinking about another trip.

I wanted to send a DM but that's disabled. So I hope this doesn't violate a site rule, but it was these people: https://www.ercotravels.com/

My then boyfriend, now husband, did what sounds like the same bits of India 30 years ago. It was the first leg of a years’ travelling after uni. We soon learned that it was a pretty bog standard tour, as everyone we met was doing the same 😂

I hated it and loved it in equal measure. We’re early 50s now and would love to retrace some of our steps when we retire. Hopefully we’d be less of a target for beggars etc.

As a woman, did you feel safe?

What did you dislike about India, if anything?

We spent 4 months in India/Nepal in the '90's, felt the same as you! Loved and loathed it in equal measures. I've been twice, I wouldn't go again. It's so intense.

Did you buy anything? Clothes, pictures, house stuff, ornaments etc?

We're going to India in October. Just a 'toe dip' ...3 nights Mumbai then train down to southern Goa. I can't wait. Price wise about half the OPs but we're DIYing it and certainly no 5 star hotels for us lol.

Would you share which hotels you stayed in? We're planning a two week trip in October - Delhi/agra/jaipur/ranthambore/goa/mumbai. We've booked somewhere in Goa but struggling to decide elsewhere so if you have recommendations I'd really appreciate it.

Also, what were your favourite bits? Anything you wouldn't do again, or anything that was brilliant but you wouldn't have thought of doing?

Thanks

Intense is the word! I was often in tears at the end of a day. I’m older and tougher now, so I’d love to compare.

We only tried a couple of actual street food stands — samosas one time, vada pav the other. Vada pav is to Mumbai what parmo is to Teesside. We also ate in a few local eateries — not the really downmarket dhabas, which are greasy spoons and then some, but a few "family restaurants" where we were the only white people.

A friend who knows India told me before we left, "The food won't make you sick, but the water will". We used bottled water everywhere, including brushing our teeth. We discarded ice cubes from our drinks except in the 5* hotels. We also avoided salads, probably excessively in the case of the hotels. Honestly, the standard of the food preparation in all but the cheapest places was very impressive.

With all that, we did not get meaningfully "sick" at any point. The gory details: We packed enough loperamide for a cholera epidemic and consumed 7 tablets between us in 14 days, most of them prophylactic ("ooh, stomach is a bit grumbly"). Really no more than any other holiday where you're eating too much rich and spicy food. At no point did we shit ourselves, have to ask the driver to pull over, disappear to the bathroom for an hour, throw up, or experience any other symptoms apart from a bit more farting than usual. Here endeth the gory details. 😃

" apart from a bit more farting than usual"

That settles it, I'll be going without DH !

We would definitely go back, but we have so many other places we want to visit, and we only have so many good years ahead of us and finite resources. In fact part of the reason I started this thread is because if we don't make it back, maybe this will help others to take the plunge.

We expected more rough edges, and found very few.

We expected the streets to be bumpy, smelly, and dusty. They were only dusty. One or two were bumpy in Mumbai but otherwise the roads were great (unlike the driving). There was some smog in Delhi and Mumbai.

We expected the toilets to be very dodgy, but they really weren't — squats in one or two places, and in poor areas someone hands you paper as you go in for a Rs 10 tip, but as a friend of ours who had also been told us, "I go to pub loos too".

We were unsure what the internal flights would be like. They were all on a low-cost airline called IndiGo. DP looked up the ages of the planes and in 3 cases they were less than a year old. It was like EasyJet but without the scramble for the overhead lockers because they include a 15kg checked bag for everyone in the base fare.

We expected the food to be hotter. We both like spicy food but we kind of assumed that it would be at another level. But even when we got food that we knew couldn't have been dialled back for white people (such as a chana masala from an airport quick-service stand), it was not as hot as the hotter curries that you can get from your local restaurant in the UK.

We went everywhere as a (heterosexual) couple. Neither of us felt unsafe at any time. Occasionally the street vendors were a bit in your face, but they go away if you blank them (don't say "No thanks", they think this is the start of negotiations). And most of the time we were with a guide, and their job includes keeping you safe.

We went out for dinner in the neighbourhood of the hotel a few times and didn't feel like we were a target, either for assault/robbery or simply as obviously well-off westerners. In fact one of the more charming things was people asking to have their photo taken with us. This started at the Taj Mahal and we thought it was a pickpocket distraction, but it wasn't. Over the two weeks we must have been asked 15–20 times, like we were celebs or something.

In Mumbai we took a couple of Ubers and they had prominent panic buttons, although we didn't ask what happened if you pressed them. I couldn't comment on what it would be like for a solo traveller — India is a sexist society, no doubt about it, but I think with your guide you would be safe. You would have to take your own view on walking alone, like anywhere.

I'm struggling... 😃

The electrical outlets are a lottery — we accidentally left our adapters at home and not everywhere has full international sockets like you get on planes.

The pointless security theatre at airports. You go through the gate and it shows a green light and doesn't go beep, but they give you the full wand treatment anyway. If you get off one plane and get on another you have to go through security anyway even though they didn't still grenades on the first flight.

Of course you see poverty, especially along the road from Agra to Jaipur in our case. But in the context of the development of the country, it's relative. We didn't see a single person who looked malnourished, and I read the other day that 99% of Indian homes now have electricity. In most of the hotels where we stayed, Indians outnumbered white people 2 to 1 or more. We didn't feel like we were surfing on top of a wave of crushed people. But of course we were merely tourists. 🙏